The Black Man's Place in South Africa eBook

There can be no doubt that the evil of miscegenation
in South Africa has been greatly exaggerated, both
in respect of its nature and its extent, but, nevertheless,
so long as the racial prejudice of the white man remains
as strong as it is to-day—­and there is nothing
to show that it is likely to decrease in the future—­so
long will it be the duty of all good citizens to discourage
by persuasion and precept the production of children
for whom the ruling race has no love and little pity.
Even those among the whites who, in a spirit of good
will and tolerance urge that the coloured people should
receive preferential treatment because of the white
blood which is in them, cannot escape having their
point of view warped by their racial prepossession,
for, surely, it is not because of a man’s class
or colour that he is treated as a man to-day but because
of his being a civilised member of a civilised community.
Nevertheless, the day when civilisation shall be the
sole qualification for full membership of the civilised
community of South Africa is not yet.

I say, therefore, in answer to the question whether,
without the full fraternity which seems impossible
here, the white and the black races may not live together
in South Africa in political liberty and equality,
that the trend of events leads to the belief that the
established pride of race of the whites, and the growing
pride of race among the Natives will conduce to voluntary
separation wherever this is possible, and that in
this way the coming generations will contrive to live
territorially separate under a common governance,
founded upon political equality and liberty.

CONCLUSION.

The evidence before us leads inevitably to the conclusion
that there is nothing in the mental constitution,
or in the moral nature of the South African Native,
to warrant his relegation to a place of inferiority
in the land of his birth, but the same evidence also
leads to the conclusion that the racial antipathy
which prevails to-day will remain unaffected by this
admission, seeing that this racial animosity is caused
not by alleged mental disparity but by unalterable
physical difference between the two races.

It is important that this distinction be grasped for
it goes to the root of the matter. It is the
marked physical dissimilarity of the black man that
rouses the fear and jealousy of the white man, and
not any inherent mental inferiority in him. And
we must take human nature as we find it, inscrutable
and immutable as it is; wherefore we must reckon with,
and not hastily condemn, the imponderable purpose
of a fundamental instinct which is older than speech
and deeper than thought, so that, although we admit
that this racial antipathy is not justified by logical
reasoning, we may nevertheless recognise it as a feeling
grounded in man’s inner nature—­in
his heart, so to speak—­hardening it against
other men whom he feels he cannot receive and entreat
as brothers; in other words, we may say that this
feeling is not the result of ratiocination but of
forces that are deeper and more elemental than reason;
that it is a hardening of heart rather than a mental
conviction, in which sense we may apply the words
of Pascal “Le caeur a ses raisons que la raison
ne connait pas.”